Why is Britain's political class clinging to the delusion that growth will return?

Meanwhile, with the autumn statement the rich rejig forecasts to slash the income of the poor

Suzanne Moore
The Guardian, Wednesday 5 December 2012

After delivering his autumn statement: George Osborne might as well have said he is going to live for ever. Photograph: PA
I am getting ready to party like it's 2017, aren't you? For that, according to the smirking Gideon, is when austerity ends. Whoopee! I just can't wait for everything in the garden to be lovely again, not just sprouts of recovery but vines of prosperity with megabucks cascading everywhere, because ... because ... well, I don't know ... because of all the things that we will make and sell to Germany? Or China? Or some great new technology that we have invented that makes us rich and makes climate change go away?

Listening to the autumn statement sent me into such a trance, I became nostalgic for the abseiling lesbians who once livened things up in the House of Commons, but I am not alone in this. To buy any of this economic downgrading/upgrading, one has to partake of the collective delusion about the return of "growth". George Osborne might as well have said he is going to live for ever. So, parliament holds its breath and argues over the minutiae of how we may recreate a bubble that was burst by more than one little prick quite some time ago.

Ah, that bubble of hope where resources are not finite, recession not global and the elixir of growth will be found at the end of the rainbow. Fool's gold indeed.

Underpinning this notion of non-stop growth is the idea of "progress", but as China's exports fall and its system remains intensely anti-democratic, this belief is surely unsustainable. Nonetheless, we plough through these economic forecasts as they are rejigged by the rich to slash the incomes of the poor. This is fantasy politics of the highest order and the fantasy is maintained by those sheltered from the effects of these divisive policies.

Which politician will stand up and tell the truth? This may be as good as it gets. For some, it certainly is. If you are middle-aged, in work and own property, it isn't bad. If you are young, unemployed, want a place of your own, and have young kids, you will know what austerity means. The veil between these worlds should by now be in tatters; instead it is wrapped as tight as a blindfold. Posh restaurants are full, house prices are huge, CEOs are still on massive salaries. It is possible to move in such circles and see deprivation only through a car windscreen.

And this screen always reflects this idea that growth will return. This is the wreckage that our political class clings to, as if it were the only answer to our woes. We could instead have a conversation about what happens if it doesn't, as is increasingly likely, actually materialise.

We could remain in denial: perhaps, unlike say India, we have just "lost" our ability to take risks. We should all live some Alan Sugar/Shopping Channel existence, work harder, and those on benefits will have to be somehow fiscally contracted, as they have chosen to be poor. This model depends on refiguring inequality precisely in the name of this spurious "growth".

Or we could look at Japan, where neoliberalism has crumbled and the links between economic stagnation and social malaise become circular. Profound alienation occurs when those who have been encouraged to create their identities via consumerism can no longer do so. The work ethic itself becomes meaningless. Indeed, the endless exhortations to work hard aimed at our unemployed youth, here or in Greece or Spain, are just gibbering into a void.

But then a politics that faced the end of growth would have to take on mass delusion. It would talk about how we are to live with depleted resources. It might, as many have argued, involve a move back from global to local production to increase jobs. It might mean work being more evenly spread out between age groups, and it would deal with inequality because the costs of it are too high. Economic downsizing always sounds hippyish. We may have to buy less and make more. We may have to factor in care of the old, the ill, the young, as part of the economy and not continue to see it as undermining it. The alternative, though, and this is still where we are at, is to be mired in nostalgia for the world of the maxed-out credit card.

If Labour cannot say "growth" is over, we have no effective challenge to the fallacy that it can go on for ever. Policy is what is stalled. To say austerity is the status quo would be seen as drowning not waving.

What do we say to those who know this to be the case, those experiencing the permanent adolescence of being unable to leave home, those with the stress of the temporary contract, those who protest or emigrate to find work? Those who are crushed because economic growth – even a tiny bit – is an impossible dream in their own lives? Do we say: don't worry, it will all be fine in a few years when the great recovery arrives? I think not. The future has arrived already. But I am afraid it has gone to bed early as it was cold but could not afford to put the heating on.